The Akiba videos and YOU

From the start of Akihabara News, we have been offering video footage on a regular basis. The frequency has dropped since the beginning of this year due to the huge amounts of time they take to make and the bandwidt they take up. In the beginning they were designed to be viewed on a PocketPC and the resolution was adapted to the landscape size of a PPC, but the quality just wasn’t up to standard when viewed on a PC, so we decided to switch to 640×480, that provided a much better result, also in full screen mode. The drawback was however that the filesize was between 10 and 50MB (for the product reviews).

So, Here’s my question for you: what format do you prefer, what support do you prefer, …?

I won’t say that we’ll satisfy all the needs, but we’ll investigate all propositions.

So, post your reactions on the forum, also if you haven’t been responding to any in the past, it’s important for us to have a good idea of what our audience wants.

I would suggest using xvid as the format because it’s free, open source and offers good video quality at a relatively low bitrate. I would also suggest using Bittorrent to distribute the files, if the bandwidth is an issue.

Daimaou

Anonymous said:

I would suggest using xvid as the format because it’s free, open source and offers good video quality at a relatively low bitrate. I would also suggest using Bittorrent to distribute the files, if the bandwidth is an issue.

Ok thanks and what about Video PODCast ?

Hates_

The streaming format Danny uses on his site is quite good.

Daimaou

Hates_ said:

The streaming format Danny uses on his site is quite good.

I had the piece of code in hands (he gave me) I will surely do that… but not only

Anonymous

Xvid or h.264

Anonymous

Make it so I can view it on my PSP.

Anonymous

Plz. make it windows media video. Anyone with windows computer will be able to see it without installing codecs (which might be impossible for soem)

Anonymous

I don’t suggest WMV because Linux and some Mac users will be able to watch videos.I suggest Xvid and bittorent is good idea now when it legal.

Anonymous

Anything but real media.

Anonymous

anyone using wmv should be shot vlc wmpc are much beyyer choices they play every thing vlc is best. you should use xvid

2. http://www.coralcdn.org . CORAL cache is a free service from nyu.edu that will cache and serve your media files. I know there’s an upper limit on file size but I can’t remember what it is. Requires some playing around.

3. bittorrent. Made before and I agree. bt works well with lots of traffic (like a newly released video) but can be tough when there’s only a couple of seeds. IMO worth using for both big and small newer videos.

The good thing is there is no restriction against commercial services. A combo of the the two should save some serious bandwidth.

As for codecs my vote goes to xvid. Quicktime player plays them for the Windows/Mac crowd with no problem.

Bonne Chance,
costoa

Anonymous

basically , divx is cool or it’s many cousins (xvid , etc)

just .. anything but wmv PLEASE !!

I use a mac, and microsoft’s ‘media player’ is total crap – it’s slow, resizes the screen, doesn’t work, makes the videos look much shittier than the windows version on purpose . it makes me die inside.

H.264 has better quality than Xvid/DivX at smaller file sizes, plus with the right settings it can be immediately transferred to the video iPods (can you say video podcast?) It can also be played in pretty much any new media player, and the encoder is free.

Daimaou

Guest said:

H.264 has better quality than Xvid/DivX at smaller file sizes, plus with the right settings it can be immediately transferred to the video iPods (can you say video podcast?) It can also be played in pretty much any new media player, and the encoder is free.

Well it seems that I may go like this

Whenever I have a news with a video, I will Put a Flash 320×240 on the news, and give you a direct link for PSP and VideoPODCAST (H.264)

No ?

Anonymous

i think H.264 or xvid are the best choices
resolution 640×480 (maybe i’ll resize it when i want to see the video on my pocket pc but it can be comfortably viewed on my notebook)

Xandrex

If i’d listen to mypersonal convictions, I’d say “OGG OGM or xvid !”. But hey, you want compatibility, so I’ll just say : xvid (quite commun today, but not so much), divx (very common, but I guess youhave to buy a licence to encode something qui a fair quality), and you can also try… Flash. I know, it may seem crazy, but everyone has a flash player. I’d rather you didn’t only published videos in flash format, though.